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Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's announcement on Wednesday that he was dropping out of the 2024 Republican presidential race looks likely to give a major boost to Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primary on January 23, the first to take place as the GOP contest gets underway.
Recent polling found Haley had closed the gap on frontrunner Donald Trump in New Hampshire to single figures, with one survey suggesting she will now pick up the majority of Christie's former voters.
National polling indicates Trump has a dramatic lead over his main GOP primary rivals though Haley has made gains in recent weeks, with some polls placing her second ahead of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The Republican contest begins on January 15 with the Iowa caucus, followed by the New Hampshire primary eight days later, with the early states often having an oversized impact on the wider primary campaign.
Explaining his decision to drop out of the GOP race Christie, a confirmed Trump critic, said he was "going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again." However, right before his announcement a microphone caught Christie making disparaging comments about Trump's main Republican opponents, claiming DeSantis was "petrified" and that Haley is "not up to this" and will "get smoked."
A CNN poll of 919 likely Republican New Hampshire voters, conducted by the University of New Hampshire (UNH) between January 4 and January 8, found Trump was leading in the state with 39 percent ahead of Haley on 32 percent, with the former South Carolina governor having gained 12 points since the last CNN/UNH poll in November. The two main candidates in the state were followed by Christie on 12 percent, businessman Vikek Ramaswamy on 8 percent and DeSantis with 5 percent.
Notably 65 percent of Christie backers said they would vote for Haley if their preferred candidate dropped out of the race, with less than 10 percent supporting any other candidate and 13 percent claiming they then wouldn't vote. This suggests Haley will be the big winner from Christie's decision to drop out of the GOP primary, dramatically cutting the polling gap in New Hampshire against Trump and potentially even handing her the lead.
A separate American Research Group poll of 600 likely New Hampshire primary voters, which took place between December 27 and January 3, had Haley behind Trump by just four points, with the former South Carolina governor on 33 points versus 37 for the ex-president. This survey also put Christie in third with ten points whilst DeSantis came fourth with five percent. Speaking to Newsweek, a Trump campaign spokesperson described this as a "garbage poll" and insisted the Republican frontrunner would secure his party's nomination.
Christie backed Trump in 2016 but has since radically changed his position, describing the Republican firebrand as a "dictator" who would "burn America to the ground."
Newsweek has contacted Haley's presidential campaign and representatives of Donald Trump for comment by email.
Speaking to Newsweek, Paul J. Quirk, who teaches U.S. politics and representation at the University of British Columbia, agreed Christie's withdrawal will help Haley, potentially to the point that she wins the New Hampshire primary.
He said: "Most of Christie's supporters can be expected to move to the Haley or DeSantis camps, since such voters apparently wanted an alternative to Trump, and those two are Trump's most credible Republican challengers. Haley will probably pick up the larger share, because she has had the more positive momentum, and she is the one more similar to Christie as a candidate, running in the 'normie' lane of the Republican race.
"In the short run, Haley's gains will probably fall short of what the simple arithmetic would suggest—the idea that most of Christie's roughly 10 percent of Republican support would quickly get added to her column. You would think that no one who supported Christie—the one candidate who aggressively called Trump out as unfit to be president and a threat to democracy—would have Trump as their second choice. But there are always a sizable number of voters who defy such logic...
"Still Haley's gains should be enough to make the race in New Hampshire quite close, and could even make her the winner there."
On Wednesday Haley and DeSantis sparred during the fifth Republican presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa, though once again frontrunner Trump declined to attend. Instead Trump participated in a town hall event organized by Fox News during which he blamed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and October 7 Hamas attack on Israel on Biden's "weak" presidency.
He commented: "They see a weak president in our country and they did something that was unthinkable. So we're going to have peace through strength. We're not going to have to fight."
Update 01/12/24, 6:57 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Paul J. Quirk.
About the writer
James Bickerton is a Newsweek U.S. News reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is on covering news and politics ... Read more